Florida Lobelia

 

Lobelia grows wild along the roadside in the Florida panhandle. It's a short, light blue flower here.

I love recognizing the close cousins of familiar flower friends when i travel to new habitats. So often, in a new place, it takes a while before i recognize the features of a place. Stopping the car on the side of the road to look closely at the bluish haze of wildflowers reveals my old friend Lobelia.

Not being a people person, i often look at new people as strangers. My sweetie, on the other hand, has never met a stranger. He chats up everyone and has them smiling within a couple of minutes. His mission in life is to bring joy to everyone he meets. He inspires me to do likewise.

This kind of inspiring friendship supports us in practicing kindness in ways that may not come naturally to us. I can look at strangers along the road and say "Hello Friend."

Earth Spirit Day

My skeleton has been sitting in the solarium for the past two months, having a cup of tea. I just wasn't ready to bury her in the basement.

The earth spirits go to ground on Halloween. They bottom out in Hades at solstice. Now, at Groundhog Day (Candlemas), they're due to pop up and take a look around.

Well, maybe not on this snowy day.

The skeleton reminds us of our future. Meanwhile, she sits still, very still, and smiles.

November Front Step

The mums on the front step have aged, turned brown, and been thrown onto the compost pile. The pumpkins came indoors before the first heavy frost. Now what remains is one flowering kale, a cyclamen from last year, and some cute little gourds. It's slim pickin's, but it's enough to make me smile.

Sink in to the pleasantness of any one small thing. Feel the joy. Let the positivity suffuse your body. Happiness.

It's enough.

If All Else Fails....

Diana's Garden

Plant yourself a garden. Today. No flowers? No problem. Choose a flower pot and just start sticking pretty things in it. Fake flowers are fine. Use what you have, and be creative.

Cheer yourself up. Let yourself smile. Pretend like you are 6 years old and have a good time.

Then quietly check in with your mood. How do you feel? Pleasant? Or unpleasant?

My Dharma friend, Diana's garden definitely makes me smile.

Wildflower Lawn

Last month, i could have eaten my lawn--it was full of blooming strawberries, violets, and sheep sorrel. This month, my lawn is a wildflower garden. Not like the ones you shake out of can. My lawn is much too common for that. Right now, it's a haze of lavender fleabane. White oxeye daisies will bloom next. Then orange and yellow hawkweed.

My sweetie, The Mower of the Lawn, has been kind enough to leave this inadvertent wildflower garden, and we walk out every evening after dinner, just to gaze at the fleabane.

Fleabane lives up to its name--banishing fleas, but, more importantly nowadays, repelling ticks.

The Dharma helps us banish those pests of mental states that bug us. We substitute the opposite qualities: forgiving ourselves for not understanding life, practicing kindness toward ourselves and others.

The fleabane makes me smile and creates happiness.

Pollinating

Walking through a London park, i saw dandelions hiding among perennial sage. The cheery yellow flowers made me smile, and when i looked more closely the little bee made me smile even more.

What is it that you want to pollinate in your life? Cheerfulness? Or stinging comments? What do you want more of in your life?

I keep angling toward happiness. My particular flavor tends to feel more like cheerfulness. How does happiness feel to you?

Glass Wall

My neighbors have a greenhouse attached to their kitchen, and it is looking spectacularly summer-ish right now. Impatiens, begonias, and verbena are still blooming. Add 2 dashes of mums--pink and yellow-- and i smile every time i look into the greenhouse.

Just outside the glass walls and glass roof, the temperatures are below freezing. The greenhouse is cool, yes, and the flowers love it.

One description of the meditative absorptions (jhanas) is that it's like sitting under a glass jar: Outer sounds are muted, and body sensations drift away to a distance, so the sense of the body becomes rather amorphous.

"Inside" the meditative absorptions feels happy and calm despite whatever may be going on outside.

The greenhouse is a protected space. So is meditation.

Pink Cereus

My pink cereus is blooming. The flower is very similar, though much smaller, than a night-blooming cereus. And the pink cereus flower lasts for several days instead of just a few hours.

Notice how the mind compares one cereus to another, one person to another, one situation to another. While this comparison is very handy for categorizing--families of flowers, for instance--it is not so kind when we compare our meditation practice to someone else's or compare our yoga pose to someone else's. This tendency to compare hooks up with the Negativity Bias (The mind is like Velcro for the negative, and like Teflon for the positive.), and creates an icky stew of unworthiness and self-hatred.

Focus on the positive for 30 seconds. Let your eyes rest on a blooming flower. Relax. And smile.

Hyacinth Smiles

I took a hyacinth to my physical therapist yesterday, but when i walked in the door, there sat Doug with a walker in front of him. Doug, a fellow gardener, was not looking happy about the walker, so i gave him (his wife, actually) the vase with the forced hyacinth.

The physical therapist, who claims she is expert at killing plants, said she was happy to give "her" hyacinth to Doug, and Doug looked a lot happier to be talking about flowers.

Generosity begets generosity.

Slightly Sweet

At the Farmers' Market, i bought a pound of yacón, sometimes called Peruvian ground apple. This potato-looking tuber is crisp like a jicama, but tastes ever so slightly sweet.

The mind training we cultivate in meditation is a crisp attention to the meditation object--sounds, breath, or touch (whatever interests you the most). As we relax into the object (instead of holding it tightly), we notice a slight sweetness. A tiny happiness, a little bit of joy.

Taking a crunchy bite of yacón makes me smile.

British Weather

I hear people complaining about the cloudy, rainy weather we've had this month of May. I didn't even notice. I've been enjoying the cool, misty, cloudy British weather. What conditions give rise to those beautiful British gardens? Cool, misty, cloudy weather.

What conditions give rise to our own internal weather?

A smile works wonders. Just a little Buddha smile on the lips. While you're at it, smile with your eyes--the sign of a true smile. Place a smile in your heart and a smile in your mind.

I feel better already.

The Delicious Smell of Skunk

I walk out the door to drizzle and melting snow, and i smell skunk. That's a definite indicator of spring.

Smell of skunk: unpleasant. The thought of spring: pleasant. It's interesting and even fun to notice the pleasant arising so quickly after the unpleasant.


The smell of skunk is deliciously awful. Stinky yes. But the skunks are mating right outside the door, somewhere in the woods nearby and have left their pee-yew pheromones for us to sniff. And smile.

True Generosity

Three weeks ago, Jane brought me a bouquet of flowers for Thanksgiving dinner. Thanks Jane, for the gift that keeps on giving! These white mums are still making me smile.

This is what generosity feels like--ripples of happiness are still tickling me.

True generosity from the heart. Not to be confused, in this season, with spending more money.

Sweet Potato Happiness

Sweet Potato seedlings--sold bare-root in a bunch

In June, i bought sweet potato starts at our local farmstand. I just harvested my first crop of sweet potatoes! I feel thrilled to discover a new vegetable for the garden, and an easy one too.

Because i planted them too close together, my sweet potatoes are the size of carrots. Still, they taste delicious.

We keep the garden of our mind fresh, and even thrilling, by experimenting with new meditations. Currently, i'm teaching a class on Hardwiring Happiness. My new practice is to focus on a happy-making thing for 30 seconds. Like sweet potatoes.

Yes, sweet potatoes may be a mundane happiness, maybe only 3 on a scale of 10. Still i pay attention to that little happiness for as long as i can. A little smile comes to my lips. I breath that tiny ember of happiness throughout my body.

Sweet potatoes. New happiness.

Hyacinth Joy

Six hyacinths are blooming on my kitchen table. I'm having my own private spring flower show right here at home, and i can really feel the healing power of plants. I would call it joy.

Smiling has all sorts of health benefits. A smile of joy lowers stress and anxiety, releases endorphins, and strengthens your immune system.

With 4 feet of snow and temperatures in the single digits, i can use a stronger immune system.

Plus the hyacinths smell so sweet. My kitchen table feels like spring.

Statues of the Buddha always show him with a slight smile--the joy of meditation. Let's sit down and smile, just slightly, today.

Smiling Pansies

Pansies are trembling in the chill April rain, but they like cool weather. Their adorable little faces look out at each April day, whether sunny or gray, no matter the adversity, and say, I'm happy to be alive. Aren't you?

I have to agree.  This morning, I listened to 2 cancer survivors talk with each other about how darn grateful they are for every single day. The grass is greener, right in their own backyard. Really! They feel more alive now than they did before their cancer diagnosis. Life is a miracle.

Isn't that odd? You stare death in the face and feel more alive than ever.
Contemplate your death today.
While the pansies are smiling at you.


Listen to this song about The Holy Now.

Meditating Frog

We went shopping for garden statues again, and this time my sweetie found a fun one. He usually likes the naked young women; i favor Buddhas and saints.

We found a meditating frog at the local farm and garden store. Perfect for the front step. Just the right combination of nature, spirit, and whimsey. I can't help but smile when i walk in the front door, and i hope visitors smile too.

"Breathing in, i calm body and mind.
Breathing out, i smile."

This verse by Thich Nhat Hanh reminds us to bring our attention back to the breath.
Calming.
Smiling.

Whether we are sitting in meditation or walking in the front door.

Smiling Pansies

I transplanted three 6-packs of pansies into 2 flowerpots on my front step. This way i can see a pansy blast every time i walk toward the front door. I can't help but smile when i look at their smiling little pansy faces.

I used to buy a flat of pansies and scatter them throughout 3 or 4 flowerbeds, but i soon lost track of them in the midst of the burgeoning growth of spring. The advantage to a flowerpot of pansies is the concentration of blooming happy faces for 3 months, until July's heat wilts them.

Sometimes we scatter our spiritual practice around, trying first one teacher then another, trying one spiritual path and then another.

Our meditation practice can lead us to smiles if we concentrate our efforts. Focus on the path with heart.

What is your path? Where does your heart resonate?